Skepticism

EVENTS

The Dark Knight Rises

I saw this new Batman movie last night, and it was fairly good: complex and twisty and dark, mostly, the way I like ‘em. It was far from perfect though, so I’ll send you off to this review that lays out the very same problems I had with the movie. No spoilers, it’s safe!

It doesn’t mention one big problem I had with the ending, though, and this one is a bit of a spoiler, so I’m putting it in rot13: Ongzna cbvfbaf bprnaf naq ungrf svfu! I just cringed at the solution to one terrible problem, which treated another serious issue cavalierly.

Also, the ending sets up the possibility of sequels, which is getting mildly annoying. Maybe these stories have roots in pulp serials, but I’d kind of like to see a story with a real ending someday.

Anyway, more sequels or no, they will not be done by Nolan or Bale. What I have heard is that DC wants to do a Justice League* movie (in 2015), so Batman will have to be rebooted before then. (Why they are bothering is beyond me. Did anyone even see The Green Lantern? I rest my case.)

…If they wanted to cover all the founders. The Avengers mixed and matched a few (Hawkeye and Black Widow weren’t founding members, while Ant-man and The Wasp were). Of the above, only Martian Manhunter isn’t particularly well known, and Aquaman is frequently made a joke.

There were some good parts, but there were so many bad ones it just felt like a rocky relationship where you’re beaten up by someone that tells you they’re so in love with you after.

Bane’s voice didn’t bother me at all, I thought that was pretty cool. I didn’t really have problems hearing what he said at all, but I had no respect for Batman in this movie. He seemed meagre, weak and only enhanced by technology. You have more respect for Bane in that sense, at least his bit of work was just to ease the pain he was in.

The relationship between Talia Al Ghul and Batman was so flimsy and empty. I didn’t feel it even added anything to the film.

The way the Robin character just busts in and says “Oh, I know you’re batman, btw” was just weak. The connection he made between Bruce being Batman was tenuous enough to near non-existent. I just wasn’t feeling that.

It bothered me that near enough everyone in the movie knew Batman was Bruce Wayne.

I found the Police force to be vapid to the point of being painful to watch. Who sends the whole fucking police force underground? What, seriously? How do they have the ability to take nearly every police officer from their daily duties, to go play underground somewhere. Is there no traffic problems in Gotham? What about Domestic disturbance or controlled substance abuse? I just wasn’t feeling that at all.

I couldn’t stomach the movie’s propensity to spawn stunt ramps in nearly every car scene. It was just… unbelievable, in a bad way. I mean, I would understand if they were flimsy ramps, but these things were just perfect for the job.

Jesusfuckingchrist, I’ve seen the movie but how about a fucking spoiler alert for those who haven’t.

As to your problems with the film, they are generally understandable, but that Batman was (comparatively to his former self and to Bane) physically weak was a deliberate part of the story, and a good part at that.

– how quickly and perfectly he can heal from injuries (I hurt my back a few years ago – something “popped”, but no vertebra out of place – and it still comes back to haunt me)

– what I call an “American-ending” (eg. if Shane was remade today, instead of riding off with the boy calling his name, he would turn around and come back). The movie was better without it, particularly with Christian Bale not returning for any future movies.

Damn. I feel all alone n’ shit. Although I do recognize a lot of the problems y’all have with it, for me this is, as of right now, my all-time favorite film.

(Any and all spoilerish stuff will be put in Rot13.)

First off, if you’ve never read Batman comics, specifically No Man’s Land, Bane of the Demon, Knightfall, and Dark Knight Returns, then TDKR is probably going to seem a bit like a mess. I’m getting the impression that, despite the overall highly positive reactions from the General Audience, this film is one fans of the comics will enjoy a lot more.

Everybody says that the Joker is Batman’s greatest villain. This is true if you define “greatest” as “having been around the longest”. And I say that as someone who believes that the Joker is the greatest comic book villain of all-time. He does not, however, present the threat that Bane presents. The reason is, in the comics, Bane oernxf Ongzna’f onpx. Guvf chgf uvz bhg bs pbzzvffvba sbe na rkgerzryl ybat gvzr, juvyr fbzrbar anzr Wrna Cnhy Inyyl orpbzrf gur Ongzna. Bane is the only one to ever actually do that.

Now, obviously, there were a lot of differences between comic!Bane and movie!Bane here, but Bane is on a very different level than the Joker. They simply cannot be compared in any way, shape, or form.

I noticed someone asking how Bruce goes from cripple to UFC fighter. Do you remember, after the hospital scene, Bruce, in his cave, putting on a leg brace that he then is able to use to kick some brick out of a pillar? I have a feeling that there’s a cut scene of him putting on the Batsuit for that final fight with Bane near the end of the film, and it includes that leg brace. How he’s walking when he ergheaf gb Tbgunz, though, is a plot hole… in fact, how Bruce ergheaf gb Tbgunz ng nyy is never explained, which kinda disappointed me. I was really hoping to see the return of LoS Ninja Bruce, if even only for a moment.

As for Batman cbvfbavat bprnaf naq ungvat svfurf… you got a better idea? He had only a few minutes to get a huge ahpyrne shfvba obzo bire 6 zvyrf njnl sebz Tbgunz naq gura fbzrubj rfpncr gung uvzfrys. What would you have done in his position?

Oh, and don’t worry about sequels. The WB is rebooting Batman to fit into a Justice League universe (for the record, at least in the comics, Justice League > Avengers). They are desperately trying to convince Nolan to Produce/Oversee it, but he hasn’t yet agreed, as far as I know.

Basically, there will be no sequels with Joseph-Gordon Levitt. So don’t worry about that.

That’s not to say that he won’t be cast as Bruce Wayne in the reboot (you never know), but it would be as Bruce Wayne, not John Blake.

As for rebooting Superman, Nolan’s already doing it with Man of Steel (he wrote it with Goyer and his brother, and he’s producing it). There are rumors that Wonder Woman will have a cameo as Diana, which, if true, would be the first legitimate tie-in for a Justice League film.

I would give it a B, with The Avengers still being the A+ best comic film ever.

Was anyone else bothered by the fact that Bale/Nolan’s Batman never really had a career as Batman? The first movie ends with him getting The Joker card from Gordon, then Dark Knight is about their battle. Then at the end of that film Bats retires, only to emerge one last time in DKR. No Bat-career fits that timeline as its presented.

I saw the movie in a normal theater and had no problem with the sound balance. Effects were loud but the score never over powered dialogue. Was it an IMAX issue? or did my theater just balance it well?

Ing, come to think of it, the volume was very loud, even by action movie standards. The cinema may have done something wrong with the sound setup, for example excessively boosting the base, or boosting certain surround-sound channels.

Thought it was okay, not nearly as good as the previous films, but I disagree that the ending isn’t an ending. It seems very obvious how this could be the end. Yeah it could get a sequel, but the point of that ending in the first place is sort of about that very idea…

Maybe these stories have roots in pulp serials, but I’d kind of like to see a story with a real ending someday.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I bet they have their roots in being noncommittal toward basically everything. All sorts of movies or novels toy with moral or philosophical issues, or at least provoking the audience to think they’re doing that when there’s barely even a superficial reference to one in a bit of dialogue or a plot device. So even at the beginning or in the middle of things, the story could be anything and go anywhere, depending on who you ask. Not having a story to tell does of course make storytelling easier, for certain values of “storytelling.” So how could one give any sort of conclusive ending if that’s the case?

The mention of audio problems with the soundtrack and dialogue is already distressing me. I felt similarly toward the other Nolan Batman films and Inception (and others from Hans Zimmer, who’s just a bit too intrusive sometimes), so it’s not very surprising. People know not to have lots of visual distractions when they want to direct your attention to something (sometimes it’s almost comical how sharply the visuals change when that’s supposed to happen), but for some reason auditory distractions don’t even get close to that kind of treatment.

I had nothing spoiled for me, but I can back up the comments that Bane sounded inaudible at times, I was sitting in the side of a theater. The autotune didn’t really match his body, way too cultured “Indeed good sir” style, considering he looks like a candidate for ‘Roid-rage Monthly.

…Batman also seems to have a handy teleportation device, frequently jumping from dozens to thousands of kilometres within the span of a few minutes, while on foot.

This review actually brings to mind one of the things that bothers me about any city siege scenario like this movie showed.

It’s a large society of people who, as soon as some bad guy shoots someone, decide to fully comply with the terrorists. Seriously? There are no ham radio operators in Gotham? There are no people with a few too many guns? My colleague at work has a handgun. A few rifle shots (you can’t tell me no one in Gotham has a high-powered rifle in their apartment) from upper-story windows would leave the terrorists terrified of walking outside – and in a city like Gotham there is no way to know from where the shot came.

Also, how the heck does one man get a freakin’ army big enough to terrorize the entire city? If you have an army that big – WHY NOT USE IT!?

Seriously, kids these days… Back in the good ole’ times we had to do only with leather straps and sticks.

Back in 1995, trying to find a working Enigma online, never mind one that had all the right settings, instead of just like, one, if you where lucky, wasn’t so easy. lol Back then, the online “promo” for the movie Artificial Intelligence, had dripping water, connected to a picture, in a “smart home”, which turned out to be Morse Code, containing Enigma code, with the “ring settings” scattered around the other pages of the site it was on. The people running it, tried every damn thing they could think of, just to keep Cloudmakers, and a few other groups, one step behind them. Or, they did, after someone quoted the whole plot of the mini-story, within the first week, resulting in frantic rewrite. A Faustian deal with Microsoft and the ad company, kept any of it from ever so much as making it into a book, or anything else that would be more permanent.

Since then, there have been 2-3 attempts at this, one of them another by Microsoft, to promote, I think, Halo 2 or 3? but, it wasn’t the same. They didn’t use the web much, except to push content at a controlled rate, over one site, and all the “contact” with the public was delivered via phone calls. Something implausible now, due to the fact that, since then, the number of pay phones you could direct call, to do that, is like.. non-existent. lol

On topic – Some time this week, I hope to actually get to see this movie. lol